Secret Level

In short, a pretty uninspiring re imagining of popular video game titles.

"Secret Level" comes loaded down with the usual dose of the DEI, woke codswallop but what really lets this series down, is the largely uninspiring tales it tells.

There's a noticeable deficit of creativity and the art of quality storytelling on offer here. Instead, this series leans heavily on CGI eye candy, dropping in the occasional celebrity actor and a vague sense of novelty, to try and carry it forward.

In summary, woke, unimaginative and generally pretty dull. I watched a few episodes before quickly losing interest. I'll stick to the games instead.

Very Entertaining.

Not all of them are winners, but several notable mentions.

Unreal Tournament, Armored Core, Mega-Man, and D&D stand out.

This felt less like an anthology and more like a showcase.

Displaying various concepts to see what people liked and didn't.

Hopefully, some of these will make to jump to full fledged shows.

"MovieGuys" saw three female characters in episode 1 and completely lost their marbles!

Episode 2 is literally just Sifu the game, episode 3 is mainly all white men, episode 4 is robot revolution, episode 5 is the best one I've watched so far, but holy !@#$, there's a black guy, as a Space Marine! A BLACK SPACE MARINE?!

I suppose robot revolutions are woke now, and of course, black Space Marines are woke, 'cause we ain't ever seen a black anybody in Warhammer before, and of course, learning to value your "subjects/friends" as a King, is woke as !@#$!

The bigoted, mysogynistic slop that passes for critique these days is just sad. "IS JUST MY OPINION, BRO! I'M NOT RACIST! YOU'RE RACIST AGAINST WHITE PEEEPOL! AFRICANS USED TO ENSLAVE OTHER AFRICANS TOO! SLAVERY, RAPE, AND GENOCIDE ARE TOTES FINE IF DONE BY A CHRISTIAN, BRO!"

Was that too much? Nah, I don't think so.

I TIGRESS!

I don't like the "I FOUND THE SECRET LEVEL, YOU GUISE!!!" cliff-hanger endings in some of these episodes. I'm also not entirely sure what's supposed to be "revelutionary" here, when it's just "Love, Death & Robots" with videogames - there's nothing wrong with that, I'm just a likkle bored already, despite ending on episode 5 and enjoying episode 5 more than most of the others (because is Warhammer, you guise!).

I'm making it sound worse than it is, I'm sorry.

If you enjoyed "Love, Death & Robots", you'll probably find some entertainment here, though you might need to adjust the brightness on those darker episodes.

I might update this "review" if/when I watch more.

We'll do this on an episode by episode basis, picking up from episode 6:

Episode 6 - PAC-MAN: Circle
I like this one. There's a lot of foreshadowing, but the ending still surprised me. My only issues with this episode are, who the !@#$ designed that sword? The handle looks like it would take the weilder's hand off! Also, why in PAC-world would you cook the head of a beast, when you have body and sword to slice flesh with? I get the head looks cool over the fire, but it seems illogical.

Episode 7 - Crossfire: Good Conflict
TBC...

Episode 8 - Armored Core: Asset Management
What am I watching here? Mechs vs. mechs and... a psychopath who doesn't care about the job details or the revelation that he's not actually one of a kind. Are we just here for the photorealism and Keanu Reeves? I love me some Keanu Reeves, but the last videogame project he was involved with was Cyberpunk 2077, which turned out to be a collossal shit-fest when it was revealed that CDPR was literally lying to everyone, every single step of the way, then delivered a game that was pretty much Vice City with a cyberpunk paint job, except with more bugs and more anti-consumerism.

I loved Love Death and Robots, it was a showcase of shorts from creators that really wanted to make those. There was art, creative output.

Secret Level is someone seeing Love Death and Robots and saying "give me that, but for my existing intellectual property". It was made to order and the order was a bunch of ads and promo for certain IPs, barely a celebration of gaming and it's history. It has no soul.

Just to cover it right away, animation was great in all, nothing to add there, problem lies in concept itself and narrative execution.

Now, there is title diversity but games selection is weird. Some episodes were actually fun - New World, for a game made by Amazon in an Amazon show, of all things, fronted by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was silly and fun. Armored Core with Keanu Reeves, SIFU and WH40K were all fine.

Pac-Man was something completely different but something was slightly off and it didn't work for me. Crossfire was just waste of time. Do people care about Unreal Tournament in 2024? Exodus, which is a game that is not even out yet, so no one knows anything about it anyway. Concord was DOA as a game, so that episode was whatever.

Spelunky, DnD, MegaMan and Outer Worlds were ok.

Then there is Honor of Kings - a mobile gatcha cancer game from China, that even China tried to curb it's success, but failed. That episode was kinda ok on surface, but also about a cancer game from hell.

And, the worst thing, at the very end, last episode was a literal PlaySation ad with Kevin Hart voicing some robot. What can you say to that?

Whole format from Love Death and Robots worked because there was passion and art about those shorts. This is just same format but used to make ads basically.

Maybe there will be Season 2, maybe they'll learn from this season and improve on it, but - although some shorts worked fine, overall concept is maybe flawed and this will never work like LDR did.

Can I recommend it? Short answer - no. Long answer - maybe if you want to see some proof of concept of famous video games and how would they work as CGI movie/series, then maybe watch this. Otherwise, nothing to see here.